• Being right at the wrong time can be the same as being wrong, a wise man once said. And this is the fear of every politician. At a basic level, it's all about judgments. Pity the poor politico whose judgment goes awry. Pity Haringey council deputy leader Bernice Vanier, who attended the memorial service for Mark Duggan, whose death in police hands triggered last summer's riots. In Tottenham on Sunday there were prayers, gospel singing, Staple Singers classics and the like. All was well until Vanier got up to speak, for her focus was all about the post-riot regeneration money that the authority was pouring into Tottenham. Mark Duggan's sister Paulette Hall got very angry, insisting that the service was about remembering Mark, not about all the money the council had received in the wake of the riots. Family members and others walked out, and only after hurried negotiations did they agree to return. After the hullabaloo, Vanier said: "I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding. The family felt the service was about Mark, but from my perspective it was also about the rebuilding of Tottenham." Right speech, fine speech. Wrong time.

• Plaudits come thick and fast for the distinguished military historian Sir John Keegan. He was revered by the others in his field. And, at the Daily Telegraph, he was the doyen of British defence correspondents. Still, it's fair to say that he took a little while to get used to the hurly-burly of daily news reporting. After a short time in the job, Keegan was called by the night news desk about a story appearing in the first edition of the Times. Can you check it out, they asked him. "Ooh, I should think that's true," he said cheerily. "Their defence correspondent is jolly good, you know."

• Keegan had contacts second to none with the Ministry of Defence. For the most part, this was an invaluable advantage. Occasionally it was a hindrance. On one occasion, after a reporter called the MoD for its take on a soldier who had gone absent without leave, alleging abuse, Keegan – who had played no part in the story up to that point – ambled over to the hack's desk. "That soldier you are interested in – he wasn't very good," he said. "Didn't fit in. They didn't really think he was up to it." "That's strange," the reporter replied. "All of the reports were glowing, and they were using him as a role model to recruit other minority soldiers at the Royal Tournament." "Oh, is that right?" said Keegan. "They didn't tell me that."

• There is a fine time being had in the Olympic village, and one reason is that, for a while at least, the competitors are all the same. Multimillionaires rub shoulders with Corinthians. Never more so than when they are being checked by security. On one occasion, an athlete pressed his pass against the reader and waited for the clearance that would follow once his name flashed up on the security screen. "Ryan Giggs," chirped the security guard, without looking up. "Did you know there is also a footballer who goes by that name?" You don't say.

• Finally, the reviewers have pronounced on Batman The Dark Knight Rises. But none is truly qualified to evaluate what we are seeing on the screen. With that in mind, Total Film magazine turns to Dr Mark Burnley, PhD, a lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Aberystwyth. "Batman's premise, that he is an ordinary man doing extraordinary things, means that, physiologically, he cannot be 'superhuman'," writes the academic. "Given that he doesn't seem to dedicate much time to training and that he's not extremely muscular, it's hard to see how he could fight off several people repeatedly without fatiguing and damaging muscle and bone." The outfit Batman wears, says Dr Burnley, is also a con. "His suit (though iconic) is totally unsuited to sustained high-intensity effort. It would impose heat injury – or, at the very least, a form of brain fatigue that reduces the motivation to be physically active. If Batman was realistically portrayed, he would be in a state of lethargy for the second half of the movies." And with that mask, that cape and those tight trousers, he'd be checking out the S&M bars of Gotham City.